Syrian Rebels’ Facebook Video Clowns Obama’s Non-Lethal Aid

With great fanfare, Secretary of State John Kerry announced last week that the Obama administration would finally provide direct aid to the Syrian opposition to aid its two-year struggle to oust dictator Bashar Assad. That aid stops well short of any weaponry or military training. Some anti-Assad Syrians on Facebook can do little but laugh.

In the video above, posted to a Syrian Facebook page on Tuesday, water bottles, chairs and what looks like a spray tub of hand sanitizer double as guns and artillery against a momentarily imaginary foe. Sound effects make the basic point. Syrian cartoonist Emad Hajjaj tweeted his rendition of an inflatable, SpongeBob-esque tank with a plunger on the turret, “From EU & USA to The Syrian People.” Gallows humor, to be sure. (Hat tip: Danger Room pal Matt Fanning.)

The Obama administration is drawing a line short of military aid to the Syrian uprising because it fears that the weaponry will proliferate to unknown malefactors, as happened in post-Gadhafi Libya, or to known malefactors, such as the Qaida-aligned Nusra Front operating in Syria. Even Marine Gen. James Mattis, the outgoing commander of U.S. troops in the Mideast and perhaps the most hawkish U.S. general on Syria, told a Senate panel on Tuesday he wasn’t prepared to arm the rebels.

That’s likely to accelerate, with or without Washington: the Arab League voted in Cairo on Wednesday endorsing the freedom of member states to arm the opposition. Even so, it’ll take a lot to ensure that Syrians fighting Assad get the last laugh.